The Vitals

My name is Kristin. I live with my husband (A.), three young sons (Cubby, Charlie, and Jack), and old collie dog (Mia) less than a mile from the Canadian border in the far northern woods of upstate New York. Once upon a time I was going country. Now I'm gone.

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Thursday, February 5, 2015

Anyone heard about all the snow getting dumped in the eastern part of the country? Anyone want to to hear more about it? Oh good, because I just happen to live in the eastern part of the country and HOLY HELL is there a lot of snow out there. Over a foot, as a matter of fact. Plus, it's incredibly cold and, as of today, windy. This means that all the snow is blowing around and creating drifts.

Today when I took Cubby to preschool, his teacher was diligently shoveling out the path from the street to the door. It's a long path that makes a couple of turns and at this point has so much snow on either side that Charlie refers to it as the tunnel. The sides of the tunnel are about even with Charlie's head, so that's three feet of snow piled up on either side. The path itself is only a couple of feet wide. This means that only one person at a time can get through the tunnel, leading to many instances of other parents politely waiting in the frigid temperatures as I try to hurry my children through the tunnel to the car.

When Charlie, Jack, and I went back to the preschool at noon to pick Cubby up, we found that the wind blowing off the lake had drifted snow over the path so that it was up to Charlie's knees in some places. The poor kid was valiantly trying to plow through the snow, but he kept falling, thus ending up in the drifts on either side and resulting in almost complete snow coverage of his person.

Meanwhile, I was hauling Jack in the car seat and trying really hard not to whack one of the snow banks, thereby sending a shower of snow on top of the unfortunate baby.

It was way fun.

We're supposed to get another 6-12 inches this weekend, which means the fun will only get more fun. Right? Right.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Anyone from the warmer states knows what snowbirds are--retired people who spend the summer in their frigid home states, but relocate to the warmer states to escape nasty winter weather.

My parents got it backwards.

They arrived from Arizona yesterday for a short visit, just in time for temperatures below zero and about a foot of snow. Basically the weather that every retired person ever tries to avoid by moving to Arizona.

At this very moment, they are hiking up the gully with A. and the older boys in search of a dead black cherry tree covered in burls that A. is going to cut down so my dad the carpenter extraordinaire can have the burls to make bowls and things. The storm that is supposed to bring us the foot of snow has begun and it's snowing pretty hard right now.

I suppose all visitors to Blackrock are aware that they're not in for a typical vacation. But at least there are no animal carcasses. Or manure. Maybe seven degrees below zero isn't so bad after all.